Rio Tries Revitalizing Port District for Olympics

5/22/2013 1:57PM

Rio de Janeiro's port district is a hodgepodge of office towers, slums and beat-up buildings. Now the city is scrambling to revitalize the area ahead of hosting the 2016 Olympics. WSJ's Paul Kiernan reports, via #WorldStream.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... I ... the escalator major role in preserving history ... created heroes for history today is a far cry from a tourist attraction ... it is even revenue collected in recent decades ... the district covers a mix of modern office skyscrapers ... noisy freeways ... crumbling colonial architecture in slums ... in the polluted water front is largely off limits to visitors ... over the two thousand sixteen summer Olympics just around the corner ... Korea's government is scrambling to transform the area ... by a multibillion-dollar urban renewal project ... the city plans to tear down double decker by a doctor runs along the waterfront ... replacing with sidewalks bike paths and four km of subterranean tunnels for traffic ... museums a trolley system and a major tree planting and they ... are designed to our residents back to the area ... developers plan to start building adult wrong branded office complex ... in the place of what's now a busy freeway ... for now though the areas of the time of construction activity ... but many observers say it will still take an Olympic sized effort to finish in time ... for The Wall Street Journal this is Paul Kiernan in Rio ...